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The Denver Nuggets handled the Los Angeles Clippers in Game 7 of their first-round NBA Playoff matchup on Saturday night, capturing a 120-101 blowout win to set up a battle for the ages against the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference Semi-Finals.
Denver's Nikola Jokić scored 16 points, brought down 10 rebounds and threw eight dimes to lead the Nuggets to a second-round berth, but the West's No. 1 seeded Thunder and fellow MVP award finalist Shai Gilgeous-Alexander await the Serbian big man, marking the clash of an unstoppable force and immovable object.
The pair of superstar talents put together historic individual campaigns in the 2024-25 regular season. Jokić compiled unbelievable box score figures of 29.6 points, 12.7 rebounds and 10.2 assists to go along with a blistering 41.7% shooting clip from three-point range.
For the Thunder, the 26-year-old Gilgeous-Alexander authored one of the most dominant scoring seasons for a guard in the history of the NBA. The 2024-25 scoring champion poured in 32.7 points and dished 6.4 assists to lead Oklahoma City to a league-best 68-14 record.
Both players have dominated the top-two spots on the MVP ladder since the beginning of the season, and the debate between the two for who 'deserves' the honor more will certainly reach a fever pitch at the beginning of the series.
Oklahoma City could be viewed as the sure-fire favorite in the upcoming series due to their plethora of versatile, defensive-minded role players and fantastic top-end talent, but the Nuggets can never be counted out as long as Jokić is on the floor.
Denver might be the underdog, but the team may have the right ingredients to pull off the upset and advance.
Possessing the league's arguable best player will get you far in a situation like this, but being afforded the luxury of trotting out the best playoff riser in NBA history Jamal Murray is another kind of advantage, entirely.
Murray notably increases his scoring average from a career 18.0-point mark in the regular season to a ridiculous 24.2 points in the postseason spanning 71 career playoff games.
If Murray were to explode for another all-time great series as a scorer to combine with the all-around offensive threat of Jokić, the Thunder could be tested.
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At the end of it all, only one of these two sensational players will also be announced as the winner of the 2024-25 NBA MVP on May 8.
More importantly, only one team can move on to the 2025 Western Conference Finals and continue on their journey to raise the league's ultimate piece of hardware, the Larry O'Brien Trophy, come season's end.
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